Leaderboard Zone

Google has fired a broadside across Apple’s bow by announcing the Google Chrome Web Store, a great idea which, to my mind, has a mediocre name – one consistent with Google’s ongoing struggles with branding in general. If I’m a typical consumer, I might be a bit confused by a name that 1. has “chrome” in it 2. has the word “store” but sells only apps and 3. has the word web in it – does that mean I can buy things on the web through it? Given Google’s lackluster performance with Checkout and its recent closure of its Nexus One store, I’m guessing the store might get a brand makeover before it launches later this year.

Nevertheless, I’m guessing Google called it a “Web” store to highlight the difference between the web as a platform for applications, compared to the term
“App,” which is almost universally intertwingled with Apple’s brand.

But the concept is quite clever – Google is reminding us all that “apps” can and should run on the open web, and not just in closed, vertically integrated and controlled environments like the iPhone/Pad/Touch.

7 thoughts on “Google to Apple: The Web Is the Platform; iTunes, Not So Much”

no doubt, game on. iTunes is headed for heading for the cloud, but don’t hold your breath for it to ever be open. Itunes 10 will be an app with cloud storage. Further, I hope Apple app-ifies AppleTV, and maybe if they can figure how to make money with apps on it it will get some improvements…cloud storage being one of them.

However, my family (sister, nephews, mom dad and even grandma) who all by now have iphones, ipad, and macs, don’t have any issues with the closed Apple ecosystem. It works for them, and its easy to use. Why would they change?

Myself included, until I really find myself held back by the Apple ecosystem, I have no reason to change. No complaints.

I look forward to what Google does though, and competition is welcome.

Quoting Google:
“An installable web app is a normal web site with a bit of extra metadata. You build and deploy this app exactly as you would build and deploy any web app, using any server-side or client-side technologies you like. The only thing that is different about an installable web app is how the app is packaged.”

So are these apps going to run on my iPhone, or just the Android platform. If it’s only the Android platform, the this is just a closed, “vertically integrated and controlled environments like the iPhone/Pad/Touch.”

For “Web” read, “Google, massive and not very open corporation that competes in the market by giving away free crack to the kiddies and collects big bucks on the back end.”

And “corporation that lies about why and when they acquired Android.”

We need a new and possibly — but not likely — unencumbered codec like we need a hole in the head. Back to the crap that originally lead to the rise of Flash video. See, the path to universal video lies this way: everybody has the codec. The hardware has the codec. You refer to it with the tag. End of bloated video. If you have to install a gazillion codecs, and necessarily at least three versions of each video, H.264, WebM, and Flash, then it’s not a simpler, faster video, is it.

Good luck with battery life. And convincing hardware manufacturers to make a hardware decoder for a codec which is likely going to be challenged. And whose video quality bites it.